


i am never getting any better.

by RaspberryDawn



Category: Smosh
Genre: Alternate Universe, Death, Established Relationship, Heavy Angst, Hospitals, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Prompt Fic, Terminal Illnesses, unspecified illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-10
Updated: 2017-03-10
Packaged: 2018-10-01 23:52:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,300
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10203662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RaspberryDawn/pseuds/RaspberryDawn
Summary: There's no clock ticking down the seconds on the wall, there's no machines beeping or giving a soft hum in the background to romanticize this all.  There's nice, dark wooden floors, and heavy white cotton blankets pushed back in the bed so he could sit up this way.  A hospital gown does hang off his thin frame, but he's wearing jeans and slipper socks.  The IV trails behind him, across the bed to the other side where the bag drips down medicine slowly.It all could be very much just anything else.  He doesn't seem like he's dying, he doesn't look like he is. Not in the way most would envision it.





	

**Author's Note:**

> I have some drabbles  
> why am I not posting drabbles in one work  
> instead I am apparently doing standalones
> 
> I apologize lol
> 
> plz heed the tags  
> both aged up for some reason
> 
> based off the prompt 'I am never getting any better'

“I am never getting any better.”

The words are spoken softly and slowly, from the edge of a hospital bed. It mirrors things that Noah has said in the past, but they never seemed as dire as now. Of course they wouldn't, not when put in to perspective with this. The way the sentence stuck in the air, making the mood heavy, well – it'd be hard to dispute it now.

He at least could try to say something though, anything. It would be wrong to leave the other hanging like this, with what seemed indicative of last words out of his lips.

“Probably...” Shayne pauses to correct himself, sitting in a chair he dragged closer to well, be closer. He still holds the strength to look directly at Noah's face, if only Noah had the emotional strength to make eye contact anymore. “Probably not.”

There's no clock ticking down the seconds on the wall, there's no machines beeping or giving a soft hum in the background to romanticize this all. There's nice, dark wooden floors, and heavy white cotton blankets pushed back in the bed so he could sit up this way. A hospital gown does hang off his thin frame, but he's wearing jeans and slipper socks. The IV trails behind him, across the bed to the other side where the bag drips down medicine slowly.

It all could be very much just anything else. He doesn't seem like he's dying, he doesn't look like he is. Not in the way most would envision it.

'We're dying from the moment we're born' was something Shayne heard from this situation before. It was not a statement he had liked to hear, because sometimes people died faster.

His skin is a little yellowed looking, giving a false impression of veins that are a bit purple. It's not attractive. It's not the lighting of the room, either, as the lighting is quite soft. The reality is just when he looks close he can see the dark pronounced circles under the eyes, the slightly thinner (and what a scary idea that is) face with cheeks sunk in, and his lips seem so dry.

The word dying is scary. The idea of admitting that to the open air. 

Not for Noah any longer but for Shayne, who would not even behind closed doors admit he wanted it all to end. He couldn't say that. Noah being tired, just being point blank realistic about admitting defeat, that was admirable. That was the kind of heroic chronically ill person slipping in to terminal status. It left out the path to getting to that point, though.

If he were to admit he wanted his loved one to not suffer anymore, it would have to be around people who had seen their own loved one waste away. Not everyone would even then have the same opinion, because sometimes, people wanted to hold on to nothing being left. Some would even hold on to empty husks – and that's not what Noah is, but it's still such a shame.

The past few months in increasing frequency being spent in emergency rooms, doctor's offices, hospital rooms, therapist's offices. It was such a heavy toll, an entire beast of burden to carry.

“You left food out for Lucy, right?”

Shayne broke his gaze to look rather perplexed at the question, wearing the confusion on his face. The cat the blond had rescued shortly after the start of their romantic entanglement, that Noah came to kind of adopt. Noah was a dog person more so, but for the (what seemed like) brief time he lived with Shayne (before going 'back home', to be closer with blood family) he was always cautiously petting her and letting her get away with jumping on everything.

“I fed her before I left. The bowl is still by the door.”

It's painful for the brunette a bit to fold his arms in his lap, but not so much pain as it's discomfort. The IV could shift a bit after all, though it was unlikely seeing as it was taped so much that moving his arm was a pain. There was a large, disgusting purple and dark blue bruise that spread around his elbow and down half his other arm from where a vein had ruptured at the start of this latest visit and it had made him overly cautious. His veins were a bit thin, they could collapse. The blood wouldn't easily nor soon reabsorb into his body, either.

“When she jumped on the counter that time. It knocked over the timer, which bumped in to a cereal box. I don't know if that was the order really, but however it happened, she knocked over your coffee, like setting off some Rube Goldberg machine. You got really mad.”

There was a pause, because he honestly could not understand why it was being brought up. He tried to recall the moment, but he leaned back in his teal chair instead and planted his hands firmly on the arms of it. 

Noah was still Noah, still bringing up something like a Rube Goldberg machine when most people at his still young age would no longer even come across the term. The over-complicated machines in cartoons that were set to a domino effect, only to do something mundane like turn on a television. It was beyond Shayne's time too, but there seemed few obscure pop culture things he didn't know.

“I probably did.” That was his favorite word lately, 'probably', it was quite non-committal yet admitted a defeat in knowledge. “I bet it was early in the morning or something.”

“You yelled, you asked why did I let her on the counters.”

“Well, she's still done it, so I don't think anything would have put an end to that. She just likes to jump, hell, she even does a pretty good job of it.”

He was resigned to just agree. His personal life was this now, it revolved around this situation. Everything else was on hold, pressed pause on it firmly, even though he couldn't be afforded to. Friends, family went by neglected. A takeout container left out became two. His emotional energy was overspent and left him with hardly any physical energy left, which he tried to funnel in to maintaining his looks. All for the appearance.

“You yelled at me, that's the thing.”

There was a moment he felt frozen, because what was he supposed to respond with?

“I'm... sorry for that, it wasn't like you could have controlled it.”

“But yeah, no. I could have, a lot of times I saw her up there before and didn't stop it. I thought it was like, if only I saw, it didn't happen, because what did it matter?”

“I don't think that it does matter.”

A response that was rather off put sounding. He tried to not be so tense, to not feel it nor look it. The air that only circulated around the room was a bit chilly and the hair on the back of his neck could already stand if he tensed just the smallest bit.

He was desensitized to seeing the forest for the trees. Conflict or confrontation worried him, scared him even a bit.

“You didn't really yell again ever after that. You don't yell much, no, but I don't think you even blamed me for anything after that. Maybe some really weak jokes, but nothing memorable, at all.”

It wasn't that Noah wanted yelled at, it was that he wanted some inkling of reassurance that Shayne was still in there. The prognosis had gotten worse after that. They spent time together while they were both scared. After all, the Küber-Ross model the way it was originally written was for those diagnosed with a deadly illness. The 'stages of grief' were observations in those experiencing their own death.

Shayne tried to ground the conversation.

“We're not going to have this fight again. We've had it before. You're not going to push me away, you tried before, it ended sappy.”

He could remember when that argument had come to a head for the first time; he had found Noah soaked through to the bone from one of the only rainy days in southern California. The red rimmed eyes had given away there were tears as well, and after that they fell back in to a bit of domesticity afterward without addressing the situation fully.

“You're going to end up being thirty. Thirty! Are you ever going to be even able to have a relationship again?”

There was a bit of Noah's brain that spent it's time occupied mourning for Shayne. If dying was easy, leaving behind a hole in people's hearts was worse. Even worse yet from that, he decided long ago, would be heading out to a forest and dying there as to not disturb anything or anyone. Initially that had seemed like a good plan, get so secluded to not be found so his body could return to the earth, yet the truth that it wouldn't feel better for others hung over him. 

He wasn't even twenty five yet, it hurt him to think his life would impact people with another good fifty years. 

“I'm not concerned about that, right now, Noah.”

The sentence was spoken gentle, yet firm.

“I don't want you to think I forbid it! Get married, have kids, adopt kids – whatever. My ghost won't bother you.”

There was already a variant of Noah's ghost that hung around, however. It represented everything they could have had. Everything Noah could have been. It was a near constant bother and reminder.

“But, I asked you to marry me. Not someone else. I'm concerned about now. Not later.”

Noah leaned back slightly, prompting Shayne to stand. It took only a rather swift moment for Shayne to have him sitting back up in bed with his legs stretched flat, not hanging off the bed like he had been. There was no use arguing for independence and against the care, because he would have had it anyway. After all, Shayne was the one who insisted Noah sit up so he could drop on one knee and take his hand softly. 

“You want to be a widower.”

Shayne covered him back up with the thick blanket.

“There's no surgery they can do, and there's only medications that aren't working as well as they used to...”

He sat on the side of the bed this time, looking at Noah while Noah was trying to look anywhere else. He took the thin hand and held it lightly, with just a small sigh under his breath.

“...Why would you want to make it hurt more? My next step is probably a funeral home, not a church.”

“It doesn't have to be official. Not on paper or anything.”

Shayne offered, repeating things that he had already said before Noah had gone into his tangent of not ever getting better.

“Is there a point then?”

“The point being that I love you.”

It was hard to see someone die. How could a body change this quick, waste to nothing? There was a lot of science behind it, really. Shayne had taken a class once, biology related, where it covered the science of decomposition. This was many years ago, yet he could recall that final scent of death was a sweet one – not that it was the same of rotted flesh, he wouldn't know. For the past few months everything had smelled of various metals or cotton. Thick yellow iodine spread about, the permeating stench of blood, bandages and gauze, even medications at times. This was only the start of wasting away, truly.

And past that, who knew if the conscious mind decayed.

“You want to be a widower.”

Noah repeated, as if he knew this as fact. He pulled his hand away, he rubbed at his cheek and face. He was so tired.

If there wasn't such a thing as spirits, the gesture was for naught. There would be no point in connection with one another spiritually, but Shayne loathed this idea. What else could compel him to want such connections?

Chemicals in the brain, yes, but that was Noah's consideration, not his own.

“I don't want you to be alone. I don't want to be alone.”

He finally was being gazed at with those hazel eyes while he spilled his heart.

“It's not even 'death do us part', it's part of me is always going to be with you. And... society usually dictates this to be what people do, then. It's what I wanted to do before you were sick.”

“Are you going to convert, become Jewish?”

Shayne couldn't help but crack down and laugh immediately at that, burying his face into his now-empty hands. He was supposed to laugh, as Noah smiled (albeit there was something barren and devoid there, not even sad anymore). 

“I think you have to, Shayne.”

The blond shook his head.

“Even for me?”

Instead he grabbed the attention for the older man to lean down and kiss him, soft lips against his own dried ones. With his good hand he held on to Shayne's arm as he felt a hands cup his face.

A smile, laugh, nor the love of each other could ease any suffering, really. A small part of him felt his legacy could maybe be left with love though, they both felt it would maybe ease a bit of pain. It still wouldn't change anything though and they both knew it. The after effects would be for Shayne to live through, later. After all, mourning was a luxury for the living anyway. There would be peace in death, and turmoil in life, but one thing was sure.

He was never getting any better.


End file.
